Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman

I sat down to watch The Tillman Story after Netflix gave it high marks as a recommendation. It was a blistering story about the cover-up of Pat Tillman's death by friendly fire in Afghanistan.

"In war, truth is the first casualty." - Aeschylus

I wanted to learn some more and remembered that Jon Krakauer had written Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman. Tillman was the starting free safety for the Arizona Cardinals when he decided to enlist in the army. Although he didn't want the attention, he was transformed into an icon of 9-11 patriotism. A legend, foregoing millions to serve his country. Neither the movie nor this book squarely address why Tillman decided to enlist. It seems clear that it was very personal decision, only show more truly know by Mr. Tillman and his wife.

What the movie failed to portray was Tillmana person. That was the focus of the book. What I didn't realize was the intellectual prowess of Tillman. He is portrayed not as a meathead jock who wants to shoot things. He comes across as thoughtful and introspective.

Besides the portrayal of Tillman as a person, Krakauer spends large chunks of the book setting the background on other key players. There is great background on history of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan going back to the Soviet invasion. Many of the weapons used against US soldiers likely came from U.S. funding of the Mujahideen during their battle against the Soviets. Then there is the rise of Osama bin Laden and his desire to draw the Unites States into Afghanistan. There were plenty of missed opportunities during the Clinton administration to counter the rise of bin Laden. Perhaps he was distracted by the Lewinsky scandal?

With the bloodshed in Iraq and Afghanistan, along came propaganda to support the war effort. The prelude to the Tillman incident was the Jessica Lynch incident. She was initially portrayed as a hero, firing her weapon until she ran out of ammunition, fighting to death and taking multiple gunshot wounds and stab wounds. Later, a Special Operations force swept in and rescued her from torture and abuse by her captors.

Unfortunately, the truth is that she sustained her wounds when her Humvee crashed into another truck in her convoy. She never fired a single shot because her gun jammed. During her stay in Saddam Hussein General Hospital she was treated as any other patient. The doctors were the ones who told US forces that Lynch was in the hospital. When the huge Special Operations force arrived at the hospital, they met no significant resistance.

Tillman played a very minor role in the Lynch "rescue." But the propaganda success of the Lynch incident played a big role in what happened after Tillman was killed by friendly fire thirteen months later.

Tillman's enlistment generated good headlines for the war effort. The military leaders and the White House assumed that painting his death as the saga of a fallen hero would create a media frenzy. Tillman was posthumously awarded the Silver Star and promoted to corporal for his bravery in the combat that took his life.

A commanding officer assured Tillman's brother that whoever was responsible would pay dearly. "This would turn out to be the first in a long string of broken promises and self-serving lies proffered to the Tillman family by commissioned officers of the U.S. Army."

Having read Into Thin Air and Into the Wild, I expected some solid writing. Krakauer has proven he can craft a true story into a page-turner of a book, bringing depth to the participants and providing insights to their motivation. He delivers again.

Where Men Win Glory is worth your reading time. show less

This book is one of the most difficult books I’ve ever read. From the horrendous bungling (& subsequent lies to the public) in the Iraqi War to the intentional cover-up about Pat Tillman’s death by friendly fire, it’s almost impossible to have any faith left whatsoever in the US military. The myopic decision to go to war in Iraq mirrors the faulty & egotistical optimism of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine so much you’d think Putin followed US conduct in Iraq like a grotesque manuscript—let’s send our young scared soldiers into a country we have no place being and make excuses for their tragic failures. All of this was at the cost of attention to the war in Afghanistan, which is referred now in some quarters as the “war on show more the cheap.” Pat Tillman lost his life for all these reasons, and the military did its utmost best to keep it quiet. Not a book for the faint of heart.

Krakauer demonstrates again the utmost necessity of investigative journalism. He’s one of our best and I’m so grateful for his existence, tenacity, bravery (he spent months on the front lines in Afghanistan), and sheer audacity (much like Tillman’s mother, whose unending attempts to uncover the truth) to take on the highest levels of our military. If you want to understand the recent history of foreign powers in Afghanistan, this will add immensely to your knowledge. It is dated because Osama Bin Laden hadn’t been assassinated yet, but that is irrelevant to this narrative for the most part. show less

I picked up this book because of its author, not because of its subject. I knew the basic outline: affected by 9/11, Pat Tillman exited the NFL, enlisted in the US Army, and was killed by "friendly fire" in Afghanistan. I'm not a particular fan of macho heroics, but I trust Jon Krakauer to tell a good story, and he does. The early chapters switch between Pat Tillman and family, and the history of Afghanistan, interest held and tension sustained because it is known from the beginning that the two will meet in tragedy. The merging of brute force and honor is rather lost on me (Pat Tillman, as a teenager, in a mistaken effort to avenge a friend who was actually instigator not victim, did serious damage to another boy, and spent time in show more jail the summer before college, after his family managed to get the charges diminished so he wouldn't lose his athletic scholarship), and channeling the inclination into professional football is a tad eye-rolling, but what could be caricature becomes a real fleshed out person with an active mind and strong sentiments, as described by family and friends. Hagiographic is a plausible accusation, but my guess is it's a minor elevation after death, not a major distortion. Regardless, all Pat Tillman all the time would be a dull book, and where I became attentive, frequently flipping back to bookmarked maps, was during the two military incidents described in minute by minute detail (in a style reminiscent of Into Thin Air): the events leading to the capture and rescue of Jessica Lynch, and the events leading to the death of Pat Tillman. Pat Tillman and his brother were opposed to the war with Iraq, but Iraq was their first deployment, and the rescue of Jessica Lynch was their first mission. Both incidents were composed of errors in judgment made under intense pressure, resulting in multiple deaths by "friendly fire", a euphemism for tragic layers of misperception and fear, covered up by military bureaucracy, and converted into propaganda by government and media. Some LT reviews criticize that the book "bogs down" in the detail, and the descriptions are "neutral and inconclusive", but I thought the opposite. Both incidents packed a lot of activity into very little time, and are made more compelling and more chilling by the slow motion unfolding. There is no need for the author to add emotion when the reader is already watching in horror.

(read 4 Feb 2011) show less

Worse than the Bush administration's shameful cover up of Tillman's death from "friendly fire" is its repugnant exploitation of the man's life and death for political gain. The revelation that General Stanley McChrystal played a significant role in the cover up is all the more disturbing since Obama hand-picked him to direct the war in Afghanistan. Tillman turns out to be a fascinating fellow and more's the pity his life was wasted senselessly.

This is a painful story to read. Pat Tillman was so worthy and the US military proved so stunningly unworthy - ultimately failing him utterly. Krakauer's account works best in covering Tillman's life leading up to his military service and in his description of the aftermath of his death. It bogs down in the detail about the context and action in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Krakauer's "Into Thin Air" and "Into the Wild" his narrative pulls us along despite our knowing how dismally these stories end. Somehow though, he cannot pull this off in "Where Men Win Glory". I struggled to finish it, but the book was worth reading if just to learn about this rare and original man who defied expectations at every turn.
While much has been written about show more Pat Tillman and his life much celebrated (over 20,000 people completed the annual "Pat's Run" last April in Tempe Arizona), there was a second soldier killed in the friendly fire incident that took Tillman's life. He was Afghan and it was more than a year before the US military even released his name, and then when they did, according to a footnote in Jon Krakauer's book, they got it wrong. show less

Pat Tillman had it all. He was a star NFL football player. He was smart, gregarious, newly married and his future was looking even brighter. Then 9/11 struck! As his fellow teammates beat their chests and howled revenge, Tillman stepped out and actually did something. He dropped his lucrative career, against immense family opposition and joined the Army Rangers. He turned down officer school because he wanted to be on the front lines in Afghanistan, serving his country and fighting the enemy. He eventually got his wish and was unfortunately killed a short time later. Was he a war hero, as the U.S. Army professed or was he fatally injured by friendly fire? Why were there blatant lies and chilling cover-ups? Caught in the middle of this show more quagmire were his loving wife and his courageous parents. Krakauer has constructed an incredible portrait of a true American
iconoclast. Highly recommended! show less

I read Jon Krakauer's tribute to Pat Tillman some time ago. The book is a mixed bag: It is too blandly hagiographical, reminding me of some life of a Catholic saint. Pat the All American boy, the sportsman, the devoted husband, the patriot who goes abroad to serve his country and then discovers that it is all based on a lie. Krakauer then breaks this frame in his account of the murder of Pat Tillman, told in a neutral and inconclusive way that fails to drive the points home. Krakauer's account also vastly differs from the clear fratricide presented in the documentary The Pat Tillman Story. Friendly fire is inevitable in war (although US forces have a sad history of being vastly more trigger happy in firing on their own and their allies show more than most other nations' forces). What deserves condemnation is a) the propaganda about the heroic death of Pat Tillman, b) the fake Silver Star and c) the bungled investigation about the real events of Pat Tillman's death. Just as Colin Powell's whitewash of My Lai, the big beneficiary of the affair was Stanley McChrystal who fell upwards.

Overall, the final account of the bright shining lies of Bush's (and increasingly Obama's) wars remains to be written. Krakauer's venture into war and politics is not a success. show less